Understanding
by Benevolent Darkness
Summary: Harry has never understood emotions. He has never understood the heart and the soul. He has decided to correct that, and in the process he gets the power to understand the world. With light and darkness at his disposal, if the world doesn't shatter, the people surely will.


In this, I will be going back and forth between ansem's reports and Harry's point of view. It won't be this frequent after this chapter, but this is the intro and it makes this make more sense. As a timeframe, when this ends (and begins), Harry is ten, turning eleven. It's about a year before his Hogwarts letter arrives.

Summary: Harry has never understood emotions. He has never understood the heart and the soul. He has decided to correct that, and in the process he gets the power to understand the world. With light and darkness at his disposal, if the world doesn't shatter, the people surely will.

Note: There will be crossovers later in this, but in this story Harry is the first to break through dimensions to get to other worlds. Therefore there will be no huge "You're the keyblade master" and other shit like that. I feel like making Harry the person the keyblades are actually modeled after.

Warning: I am good at making psychotic people without even trying, and I'm good at character personalities, especially crazy people. This warning is actually to warn you about my tendency to make complex plots. If you don't like complex plots, then this isn't the story for you.

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_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Page 73._

_…My research has broken an old foundation of existence. The heart does not, in fact, exist solely in darkness. It has astounded me. There seems to be luminescent strands of light even in the blackest of shadows. It is severely limited, but it's there. This may create the foundation of an entirely new power: What would happen if light and darkness… connected?_

_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Page 103._

_Light and darkness CAN coexist! It is severely volatile, but possible. Now begs the question of how to harness it. The clashing natures of the two elements fights constantly. For a perfect fusion, the mesh of darkness must exceed the light. Darkness is infinite. It never ends and is everywhere. Darkness is weak, though, while light, though limited, is composed of colossal might. To balance out the light, darkness must be prevalent. I can only hope that it is possible._

Name: Elizabeth Paige

Age: 14

Occupations: Student

Noted details: No living family. Orphan who received a government mandated stipend to continue comfortable lifestyle. Will not be noticed if gone missing.

Status: Success.

Harry smiled. Harry grinned. Harry laughed. He laughed and laughed. He had succeeded, finally. His experiments have culminated to this point. The point that he, Harry Potter, had created his own power. A way to protect himself against all who would want to hurt him. A way for him to _understand._ That was all he wanted. He wanted to understand. He wanted to understand the heart and the mind. He wanted to understand the soul. He wanted to understand what made power and what could take it away.

It all started when he was five. He noticed the way people treated each other. He saw happiness and joy in some. Sadness and anger were visible in others. Harry, himself, didn't understand it. He never felt anger; it was like he was incapable of it, or never learned how to feel it. Harry never felt misery; it was simply an idea that forced the brain to release certain horomones in response to trauma. Harry never experienced joy. He never experienced anything but the monotony of work and wear.

And then there was curiosity. He never truly felt it before, but that idea led him to try and understand what everybody else felt. He wanted to know. So he began to take leave of his abusive relatives to study the philosophy and science behind feeling. That led to psychology. He somehow understood the ideas and processes in the readings; he even knew the words somehow subconsciously; but it was no replacement for the feelings themselves.

That dead end led Harry to try to force himself to feel those emotions. His first attempt was to feel sadness, and the more absurd feeling of misery and hopelessness. In order to initiate that, he concluded the death of family in a person's life often left a sense of devastation- a close relative to hopelessness. He made an elaborate plan to erase any and all evidence, and struck. Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley Dursley died excruciating deaths. The remains of their bodies were taken to a mortuary, and their deaths were acclaimed as "A rabid animal attack."

It did nothing. Harry was still without knowledge of anything. The heart and mind were too complex and sophisticated to be manipulated so easily. Harry had underestimated the power of his own, and because of that, there were complications to his research. He would go to an orphanage for the remainder of his childhood or until he is adopted by a family. Both of those were unwanted possibilities, but in the orphanage, he had masses of needed materials. He pushed all possible parents away, and kept them at arm's length. It would not do to be pulled from his research so suddenly.

As soon as he came to the orphanage, "Morningside Orphanage," he delved into the next branch of understanding. He might be able to simulate emotions if he properly understood the human psyche and its components. Then he would need a laboratory to do the theoretical extractions. Maybe it would allow him to understand the pain and joy out in the corrupt world instead of viewing it in such an objective manner. Understanding is the key component to wisdom. Wisdom is the key component to knowing. Harry wanted to know, because no one can survive anything without knowledge.

Securing a lab was easy. The power of words transcend any attempts of force. Harry understood it, even if others refused to see such an elementary concept. Getting the test subjects was also easy, even if unwilling. He would just need to subject the other orphanage children to chemical structures that would make them cataleptic. It could be verified with forged documentation and quick acting to throw away all suspicions. It was immensely easy. The complications that arose were the theories. There were none.

Everything was proven by a scientist's point of view. Nothing could be said if it wasn't entirely obvious. Everything went back to "chemical compounds excreted by the brain throughout the body." Nothing went towards more obscure theories of the supernatural and preternatural. Harry knew this to be false because of the minute energy given off by the body, particularly the metaphorical heart- the source of emotion, mistaken by scientists as the part of the brain which excretes the chemicals to affect feeling, known as the limbic system.

Harry was, after much thought and research into theoretical and mythical backgrounds, able to capture such emotion from a body feeling it and extract it into a liquid. He would incite such emotional responses from pictures shown to the research prisoners to garner obvious emotional complexities. It was a complete success. It opened so many opportunities for further research and understanding. Harry used this opportunity to inject himself with a vial of happiness. The results were less than expected.

The feeling was dark. It wasn't evil, but it was dark, like a midnight sky. It was a black feeling. Harry didn't like it, but he found it intoxicating. It made him want more. It was so satisfying that Harry refused to indulge in it ever again. The feeling was just so unnatural for him. It was like it was trying to take over before it passed.

Further testing and research on other people showed normal effects. The emotions affected everybody else completely naturally. Joy would make a person joyful. Anger would instill a person with rage. And then Harry decided to start studying the nature of the energy itself, because these experiments weren't making any progress other than show the dark nature of emotions.

_Excerpt from Ansem's Journal, page 18._

_The discovery of the nature of emotions frightens my assistant, Locke. I have convinced him of the good it will do, but I fear he may leave the moment there is an obvious negative effect on my subjects. He fears I may kill them. What I have found is all emotions are tied to the shadow. The heart's true essence is darkness. All emotions are drawn from darkness. Happiness, Love, anger, misery. It all comes from darkness and only darkness._

After his discovery, Harry moved further into his studies on the heart. He began to tie the power of memories into the equation, and found that he couldn't. Memories were tethered to something else. Memories affected the heart, but when introducing the isolated emotions to the memories, the energy around the emotions would reject the memories as a separate entity. It was baffling.

Further experimentation proved the existence of the soul. The soul held the memories of the original person. But, this stunted Harry's research because to do research into the soul, he had to separate the soul from the body. He didn't have the methods to do such a thing. It was excruciating to know.

_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Page 60._

_It has been completed! I've created an item to cut through antimatter and reduce everything except the soul to its original form. It would effectively separate the soul and heart from the body. It will advance my research by eons. It is in the form of a weapon that I have formed from my own emotional energy. Even with my lack of emotions, I still exude the heart's energy. It has coupled with my soul, and formed into two semi-tangible objects. It is incredible that I have discovered such an amazing power._

_What interests me, though, are the facets of the heart and soul which I have unleashed. One seems to give off the expected darkness which comes with the heart. The other, though, is the polar opposite and seems to be made out of light. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented in my research. It requires more study into the two weapons._

_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Page 62._

_These weapons have changed. Where they were once nameless artifacts of unique properties, they have suddenly taken the form of keys. It may be symbolic to my soul and heart. It is unknown. The primary tests of their unique properties have done nothing. It seems that every living thing they strike vanishes without a trace. These tools will be useful for self-defense, but there is no scientific possibilities that they encompass. This project will be discontinued until more information about the weapons is available._

Harry remembered when his assistant, Locke, had left claiming 'insanity.' The man had been dealt with, and was used as one of the test donors. He was the first to show positive results after coming in contact with the two large keys. There were many pieces of equipment around the room to measure the reactions from as many angles as there could be.

When Harry stabbed the man through the chest with the black blade, the man vanished, as always. Several machines, though, picked up residual energy not unlike that which a heart gives off. There was an odd frequency, though, which showed as well. It was measured as nuclear radiation, but couldn't be because there was no nuclear radiation. That was what Harry began to look for in later attempts.

Those later attempts proved fruitful. Harry concluded the energy akin to nuclear radiation was actually an emotional discharge, reacting from the change in forms of memories. This proved that the people and animals struck by the keys didn't just disappear. They, in fact, reacted exactly as Harry wanted them to. They split into heart, body, and soul. The thing that Harry didn't understand was where those facets disappeared to after being struck.

This research couldn't be simply answered. To answer this he would have to know where hearts truly came from. He already knew that the soul came from nothing, but there was no way of knowing where the heart came from without careful observation and testing. He would need newly born infants to conduct this research.

Sneaking into a hospital with forged documentation was tough. Harry had to develop good hacking skills just to pass himself off as an adult with a medical deficiency. After that he still had to bypass the English government's archive firewall and extract information on medical licensing and distribution. It took a year at most, but with his incredible learning curve, by the time he did it, it was child's play.

With proper research material, Harry continued his studies into the existence of the heart. He observed the birthing of children, and with a vast new multitude of equipment, he studied the minute distribution and cycles of emotional energy and the soul's introduction into the newborn. It was enlightening.

_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Page 68._

_The data in the algorithmic sequence the heart shows in its introduction gives inference towards a greater power that all hearts originate from. It is no god, and it is no demon. It may be perceived as heaven, even. It is where everything begins and ends. For the purpose of scientific discovery, I shall call it… Kingdom Hearts. From my research into hearts and their polarity, I can conclude that this Heaven is entirely made out of 'dark' intentions and chaos. If I can get my hands on even a fraction of its power, I will be able to understand so much. Even a sample will be able to complete even entire branches of my research._

With the knowledge of such a greater existence in mind, Harry decided he had to find a way to force the soul, heart, and body of his victims to stay within this realm of reality. He had to make some sort of barrier that would defend against the untimely disappearance of the facets to another plain of existence. Harry was sure the three pieces of a living being were out there, one for everything he struck with his key. He just didn't know where. If he could isolate the occurrence and force a protection against it, then maybe he could create a connection between the two plains.

It was with this in mind that Harry covered the room in thick lead and layers of the black emotional energy. Harry grabbed one of the many subjects, a girl who had an especially strong will to survive and hope to escape. She was fourteen years old. She actually managed to elbow Harry in the jaw before being restrained. Her golden hair sagged when it played upon the table. Harry turned and skimmed her file before writing in some notes.

Name: Elizabeth Paige

Age: 14

Occupations: Student

Noted details: No living family. Orphan who received a government mandated stipend to continue comfortable lifestyle. Will not be noticed if gone missing.

Harry lifted the two blades high into the air and brought them both down. As soon as they punctured her chest, a great influx of energy was released into the air. It pushed Harry back before he held fast on a metal table bolted to the ground. When the wind settled, Harry opened his eyes, which had closed to prepare in case of stray debris. Those very eyes widened at what they saw.

Picking up a pencil, Harry moved to grab the folder. He penned, very finely, the following words.

Status: Success.

_Excerpt from Ansem's journal, Pages 72-73._

_There were three things standing in front of me. I watched in awe as the soul glowed a golden light. Wings sprouted out of its back and it looked like an angel come from Heaven. It had golden hair and white eyes. It almost looked like a dancer. Its aura radiated apathy and grace. It was like there were no emotions. I will call it a Soulborne, a creature made out of pure light. It seemed to have an intense desire to destroy the heart-piece of its whole. It somehow restrained itself._

_The second manifestation was the heart. It looked like a normal girl, except it had golden eyes in contrast to normal eyes. Those golden eyes also weren't the same eyes the girl had before, which were documented as blue. The golden hair had also dirtied to a vibrant green. The color seemed natural. The face showed apathy, but there was an intense desire which it exuded outwards. It showed less restraint in its hatred for the soul. Because of the hatred it showed forth and its desire, I will call it a Heartless._

_The last being was what surprised me. It seemed that the body somehow regained control. It was an almost replica of the girl, but had some unremarkable tattoos tracing around her eyes like eyeliner. It put forth a feeling of nothing. It was as if it wasn't there, yet it was. It didn't seem to care about the presence of the other two, but instead had its eyes focused directly on me. It looked like it was waiting for something, but had all the time in the world. Because of the feeling it was giving off, I will call it a Nobody._

_The three beings together look to be light, dark, and something else. There wasn't supposed to be any light in the human body. It was impossible to have light in a darkness such as the heart. Was it possible that light was forcefully kept separate from emotions because of darkness's volatile nature? Light seemed to be in complete apathy towards everything else. It was powerful. My research has broken an old foundation of existence. The heart does not, in fact, exist solely in darkness. It has astounded me. There seems to be luminescent strands of light even in the blackest of shadows. It is severely limited, but it's there. This may create the foundation of an entirely new power: What would happen if light and darkness… connected?_

Harry walked over to the three being. He took one step, laughing. His laugh almost turned manic from the sense of accomplishment. He let the dark emotion of joy quickly wash over him. Harry made a mental note to research why he was starting to feel more emotions. That thought was put to the back of his mind.

One step turned to two, and two to four. He stopped in front of the three beings. The Nobody made the first move. It bowed deeply in some sort of respect. It startled Harry, but not enough to show. The other two didn't seem to trust each other enough to bow and show a sign of weakness in front of the other, but those two followed suit quick enough. Harry stood there, waiting for them to rise. When they didn't, he spoke up.

"Rise."

They did.

"Can you speak?"

The Nobody answered. "Yes. I am able to speak."

The Heartless followed. "I am able, as well."

"Hn," was the only response from the Soulborne.

Harry pondered for a moment. "Are you able to tell me how you're able to talk?"

"I have a mind. I'm able to think." It was the Nobody.

The Soulborne spoke next. "I am able to cling to memories. I am made from memories."

The heartless was last. "Emotions hold memories. Each emotion has a thought which goes with it. Using those thoughts brings the expression of language."

Harry nodded. "Are the others like you?"

All three gave a simultaneous "No."

"Where do you all go after I make you?"

The Heartless responded. "We, my kind, goes to a place where only darkness exists. It is where we are most powerful."

"Us, the beings of light, go to a world of complete light. It is the perfect world without war and anger and joy. Those… emotions… breed only chaos."

"I do not truly exist." That explained a big question of Harry's. "Our kind doesn't exist. We are the husks of who we once were. Our kind gathers in a world which is opposite reality."

Harry smiled slightly. It was a smile of feigned happiness. "Can you bring them here, or me to them?"

"Yes," was the response of the nobody.

"Is there a way for me to bring them here myself?"

The heartless gave a maniacal smile that showed insanity. "Yes."

Harry's eyes seemed to glow. The green bled to a slight red before disappearing. "Show me."

* * *

I hope you liked it. I just had this idea after reading another vaguely similar story. The other one was really good, but not a lot of people liked it for some reason. That story gave me some real inspiration, and I wanted to try my own completely unrelated version with a completely different crossover so the two stories, when read, bear no relationship towards one another.

Also, with any of my stories, including this one, I encourage somebody else to take my idea and either continue it on your own path or completely rework it. I would love to see what ideas other people have for my stuff. Just send me a pm and go right ahead. I don't care if you suck or if you're good. I just want to see what other people do with my stuff.

Benedark, the one who returns to darkness.


End file.
